Like tears in rain

Consider this: modern capitalism was pretty much inconceivable to people living in the feudal era. In the same way, it is possible that the system we need is inconceivable to us at the moment. Critiquing capitalism and advocating for a move away from it is still useful.

There are plenty of things that haven't been tried aside from small-scale examples:

• An economy based on worker cooperatives
• Universal Basic Income
• Universal Basic Capital
• 'Library economics' or 'Library Socialism'

Same; I've been trying to disengage from anything big tech related recently, not just social media, even Amazon etc. Can't take it anymore. It's all so blatantly exploitative and fucked up. Cancelling subscriptions feels good; hope I stick to it. Can't shake YouTube yet though, need my Rossmann fix. Hopefully we can figure out a viable FOSS alternative; tried PeerTube but it doesn't quite do it just yet.

The Internet can still be a beautiful positive thing.

BezoSpez Zuck-Musk can fuck off.

All the actual journalism getting paywalled probably isn't great for social/political discourse and our general grip on reality.

We should crowdfund some Lemmy ads

I appreciate you trying to answer a question in good faith, but you're conflating 'liberal' with 'vaguely left-leaning', and none of what you've said makes any sense outside of current US political 'discourse' where 'Liberal' means 'slightly left-wing'. 

What you describe as liberal economics is closer to Keynsianism or Social Democracy. 

In economics, the 'Liberal' school of thought is generally against regulation and interference in the market, seeing it as being 'self-regulating'. In economic terms, Reagan and Thatcher were Liberals - hence them being associated with 'Neoliberalism'. 

The whole thing you said about Capitalism tending towards monopoly is actually a very Marxist/Socialist idea - Liberal economic theory tends to argue that monopolies form because of government and that they wouldn't occur in a truly free market (although its more nuanced than that, there's major disagreements over 'Natural Monopolies' etc. within the Liberal school). Source: look up any Liberal economist/thinker and their view on monopolies. E.g Friedman, J.S Mill.

Capitalism being an economic system doesn't make it apolitical. 'In theory' Liberalism and Capitalism are very very closely intertwined, it's not implicit, it's absolutely explicit if you read any Liberal political or economic theory. 

Economics is inherently political.

https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/neoliberalism/#Libe Sections 3 and 4 of this are a decent starting point.

Also the idea of slightly changing our voting systems as the way to drive change is quite hilarious. Sure, moving away from FPTP would probably help a bit, but it's not like countries with other systems are doing fine. These issues are more fundamental. And historically, fundamental change has never occured through small technical adjustments to political systems.

btw they do store a lot of their money in vaults where it doesnt benefit the economy at all.

This is in the form of expensive art that stays in containers in tax-free zones, and offshore accounts in tax havens.

Please educate yourself.

https://archive-yaleglobal.yale.edu/content/how-wealthy-sell-treasures-tax-free

https://www.icij.org/inside-icij/2017/09/7-charts-show-how-rich-hide-their-cash

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Panama_Papers

https://academic.oup.com/ser/article/20/2/539/6500315

Have you considered that this too might be an 'experiment'?

Defenders of monarchy and the divine right of kings used to argue the exact same thing - that we tried democracy before and it failed in the Roman Republic and Ancient Greece - so clearly feudal monarchy is the best, right?

Yet here we are, experimenting again.

Why is this joke of a system the ideal? It doesn't produce innovation - most of the stuff that led to the internet and modern computing came out of DARPA and various govt funded universities. All of our space advancements were from state-run NASA and the Soviet space programme. The wealthy CEO types only start 'innovating' after taxpayers fund most of the R&D. Same with medical advancements, material science, physics - almost every single positive innovation has come from state-run, taxpayer-funded, or non-profit institutions.

Maybe try reading a little bit more about all this innovation you seem so fond of:

https://academic.oup.com/ser/article/7/3/459/1693191

https://demos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/Entrepreneurial_State_-_web.pdf

https://yewtu.be/watch?v=oLLxpAZzy0s

If anyone wants to see the actual situation here's NASA's live map: https://firms.modaps.eosdis.nasa.gov/map/

and a guide on how to use it, what all the symbols mean etc: https://yewtu.be/watch?v=SSd7KnWN9CM

European style houses won't save anyone from extreme heat

https://climate.nasa.gov/explore/ask-nasa-climate/3151/too-hot-to-handle-how-climate-change-may-make-some-places-too-hot-to-live/

Europe has had plenty of fatal heatwaves in the past.

https://www.metoffice.gov.uk/weather/learn-about/weather/case-studies/heatwave#:~:text=More%20than%2020%2C000%20people%20died,Europe%20sweltering%20in%20August%202003.

Saudi Arabia has 'proven' whatever it has proven through insane levels of draconian state intervention in everything, a lot of oil rents, and using imported slave labour.

https://mideast.shisu.edu.cn/_upload/article/2f/5e/aaff7a9b4644a4b5234d6a4e6f0c/1f06bdf4-bf8b-4874-9567-d5412e350c32.pdf

https://www.hrw.org/reports/2008/saudiarabia0708/5.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Foreign_workers_in_Saudi_Arabia?wprov=sfla1

Hardly a model for anyone to follow.

Ah the innovation argument, so original. "Capitalism creates innovation". Everyone says it all the time so it must be true right? Well it isn't. Data doesn't support this argument.

Pretty much every major innovation of the past century has come from publicly funded and/or not-for-profit research and development. Capitalists only step in once the difficult part is done and the 'innovation' can be repackaged into something profitable in the short term.

See the following: https://academic.oup.com/ser/article/7/3/459/1693191

https://demos.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/files/Entrepreneurial_State_-_web.pdf

Capitalism definitely creates barriers to certain types of innovation. Mainly innovation that isn't profitable - see 'planned obsolesence'. It also creates barriers to profitable innovation sometimes; just look up 'patent trolls'.

But I was never even talking about innovation. You just jumped to it because that is the classic buzzword talking point that is constantly repeated everywhere. 'Develop better alternatives' doesn't have to be 'innovation'. We have the technology already, we've had it for decades. Trains and cycle lanes = better alternatives to cars. Nuclear energy = better alternative to fossil fuels.

Market capture exists everywhere, in every economic system.

Sure, this might be the case for every existing economic system. I believe we need to develop something new. Just like modern Capitalism was inconceivable to someone living in the Feudal era, a new system might be inconceivable for us right now. But it is imperative we try.

It's bean fun

Feel you with being unable to keep up. The thing is, most of the outrage is artificial; have to remember the incentive structures of media etc.

If its any consolation, I reckon the average person being unable to keep up with stuff during periods of rapid change has always been the case historically. Most conversations, discourse, etc that have shaped society have been either among small groups of powerful people motivated by various interests, or stuff like pamphlets, polemics nailed to church doors, talking points, buzz words. This riles people up and is effective at getting stuff done but not effective at all at having an actual conversation. So the average person just gets swept up in the tide.

I am not an expert in political history by any means but I can't think of a single example in which people just talked to eachother to decide the direction of society. Seems like it has always been 'waves' or 'trends' or 'forces' and then 'backlashes' driving things. Historical developments and transformative change seems to just 'happen' and suddenly you live in a fundamentally different world.

Like, did we ever have a conversation, as 'a society' (if it can even be considered a singular entity) which resulted in the decision to put big tech corps in charge of running the main platforms we use to communicate with eachother?

Of course not; it's like we woke up one day and suddenly heads of state are issuing diplomatic communications via goddamn Twitter so we all just use that now. Again, not a historian, but I think it was a similar thing with major historical shifts like industrialisation etc.

And then we get hit by the consequences, and are totally unprepared, as if they were unexpected. A small group of random people having a conversation over drinks could have anticipated pretty much every single issue we now have with big tech running our social platforms, and probably could have anticipated many of the pitfalls of industrialisation or globalisation (not saying these don't have positives; but we're dealing with the pitfalls now so it is what it is).

I think this kind of approach to discourse and societal decisionmaking is very vulnerable to being overwhelmed by the sheer volume of information in the modern world.

I recently read 'The Word for World is Forest' by Ursula Le Guin, and am reminded of this part in the introduction: "They have built a system of inter-personal relations which, in the field of psychology, is perhaps on a level with our attainments in such areas as television and nuclear physics." (Context: the Senoi people of Malaysia).

We haven't developed our 'social technology'; we're operating on the same kinds of social tech in the past, which is simply not equipped to deal with a connected globalised world. I think this extends to stuff like academia and journalism. We desperately need an approach to making sense of the world in a calm and thoughtful manner; but since our social tech can't really facilitate that, we're doing... whatever it is we're doing rn.

And coming back to capitalist incentive structures: inflammatory stuff generates more engagement, ad revenue etc.

I am holding out hope that smaller, FOSS alternatives which do not have such incentives will lead to better conversations

This is entirely my observation but the conversations I've seen on this platform seem more like actual conversations vs the almost-artificial 'talking past eachother instead of talking to eachother' I used to see on Reddit and Twitter.

Sorry for the ramble. My first post on any public-facing online thing since I quit posting on random forums like 15 years ago. I always lurked on Twitter and Reddit but feared that actually posting and/or getting into arguments would drive me insane so avoided it. Hello everyone; let's be humane to eachother and enjoy eachother's company. There's enough alienation in the world as it is. Thanks for reading to whoever is still reading.

I swear we need to retire the term 'Capitalism' entirely because it seems like it's impossible to discuss its flaws without someone just assuming it's a statement in favour of resurrecting Stalin. This has nothing to do with communists.

Electricity can be produced in many different ways - it's just that some are more profitable than others.

Capitalism also creates an entire web of incentive structures that make it hard to develop more sustainable alternatives - e.g car industry creating 'lock-in', as described in this paper. I'm sure a similar paper could be written about some Soviet bloc state 60 years ago, but that's irrelevant. This is a problem of Capitalism and the Soviet bloc doesn't exist anymore. Just cause 'Stalin bad' doesn't mean 'Capitalism can do no harm ever'.

Sure, real economists don't explicitly hold those views. But the kinds of metrics and models liberal economists are fond of using basically lead to that flowchart.

Did you read any of those links? 10% of world GDP. That's not relatively little. That's insane.

And stocks doesn't automatically mean good. How much of that is speculative bubbles and hype-driven overvalued stocks?

None of those links are about Chemistry or Physics. The demos link is Economics, The Entrepreneurial State. The youtube link is about the history of the internet. Maybe try learning something that isn't STEM. Might broaden your way of thinking.

I'll respond to the rest of your comment later, although I'm not sure I want to anymore since you clearly have no interest in taking into account new information.

Also how the fuck can you be interested in technology and say something like this:

Because most of it was useless. What kind of innovation did. space exploration bring to humans?

If you know anything about any science you should know how stupid of a point this is

The rich would just leave the country and some other country would profit from their taxes.

This is an oft-repeated talking point but usually contradicted by data. Sounds smart but isn't smart.

https://www.theguardian.com/inequality/2017/nov/20/if-you-tax-the-rich-they-wont-leave-us-data-contradicts-millionaires-threats

https://www.taxresearch.org.uk/Blog/2017/11/20/if-you-tax-the-rich-they-dont-move-they-just-pay/

Rich people are people and most people don't just up and leave behind places they've built their lives in unless under extreme pressure. A few billionaires might relocate to the Bahamas but they're not going to be able to take their mansions and penthouses with them - and they lose out on the markets, infrastructure, and other benefits of their home countries. That's a major incentive to just pay the taxes.

If you believe to know which ones are overvalued, then you should try to go buy short positions in them. Maybe you become rich then?

Who says I haven't done that already?

The stock market is relatively precise, it also projects potential into the future.

The stock market is not precise. I have data and papers discussing this - but there's no need for them. I'll instead leave you with a simple question: if the stock market is so precise, why is there a major crash every decade?

Due to that many stocks to combat climate change have risen in popularity and a lot of money has been brought to said companies by purely capitalistic driven motives.

Sure, purely capitalistic motives, which is why a lot of these are impractical venture capital BS and outright scams. It is currently more profitable to greenwash than it is to actually solve the problem.

You don't have to take my word for it: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/26/chamath-palihapitiya-esg-investing-is-a-complete-fraud.html

what's your favourite type of bollard and why?

The 'future' is not inevitable. There have been countless collapses in history. Our technology doesn't make us immune. The people of the major Bronze Age powers probably thought the same.

Also we do not have the means for weather engineering. If you're talking about SRM, we have no idea what its consequences will be or how to do it effectively. It's all theoretical. No aircraft we currently have can do this stuff. Sure, we could design it and build one, but then you need global governance to actually implement it properly. Not to mention the risk of 'termination shock' and countless others.

Have a look at the scientific literature: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/Stratospheric-aerosol-injection-tactics-and-costs-Smith-Wagner/e4e5a78335eda8c16557b32af915798b06091362#cited-papers

Would you seriously risk the future of life on Earth on something this experimental?

I fear this arrogance will kill a lot of people and cause a lot of suffering.